Andy Grove Tells The Truth About What Great Leaders Do

It
happened in on October 3, 2002. I was at
a Harvard Business School Press conference in Cupertino, California,where Clay Christensen of Innovator’s Dilemmafame was
interviewing Intel’s former CEO and Chairman
Andy Grove. As I point in The
No Asshole Rule, I’ve always admired Grove because – although he is
tough and argues over ideas (and I don’t even agree with a lot of his ideas) -- he argues because he cares about testing and developing ever-improving ideas,
not to put people down. Grove is the poster
boy for Intel’s constructive confrontation, which I talk about in this edited
excerpt from Weird
Ideas That Work. To me, Grove
demonstrates how it is possible to be a tough and effective leader without
being an asshole – in part because he is one of the most honest executives
around, about both his own errors and those made by others.

Grove’s
quote that day was so compelling to me because it conveys so much about the primary
dilemmas that leaders face, and what skilled leaders can do to salvage even
most seemingly impossible situations. [Note
that quote comes from a transcript of the talk that the folks at Harvard gave
me. I have edited out a few lines, in part,
because Grove made some comments about the Soprano’s TV show that were funny,
but distract from the main point]. Grove
said:

“None
of us have a real understanding of where we are heading. I don’t. I have senses about it…… But decisions don’t wait, investment decisions
or personal decisions and prioritization don’t wait for that picture to be
clarified. You have to make them when
you have to make them. So you take your
shots and clean up the bad ones later.

And
try not to get too depressed in the part of the journey, because there’s a
professional responsibility. If you are
depressed, you can’t motivate your staff to extraordinary measures. So you have to keep your own spirits up even though
you well understand that you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Then,
Clay Christensen asked, “So how do you work on that part about keeping good
spirits or managing emotional response, leading your team.” Grove answered:

“Well,
part of it is self-discipline and part of it is deception. And the deception becomes reality --
deception in the sense that you pump yourself up and put a better face on
things than you start off feeling. After
a while, if you act confident, you become more confident. So the deception becomes less of a
deception. But I think it is very
important for you to do two things: act on your temporary conviction as if it
was a real conviction; and when you realize that you are wrong, correct course
very quickly.”

1.
The last point in his quote is “act on your temporary conviction as if it was a
real conviction; and when you realize that you are wrong, correct course very
quickly,” a nearly perfect compact summary of the most important single idea in
our book: Effective evidence-based management entails adopting the attitude of
wisdom; acting with knowledge while doubting what you know. This means,
as I’ve written here before, that the best leaders have strong
opinions, weakly held. They need strong opinions so that people can
accurately assess an idea, and especially, so they know how to implement it –
which ultimately means that things go wrong and go right, it is possible to
tell WHAT has succeeded failed.

2. The second idea is about confidence and the power of the
self-fulffiling prophecy. Note how Andy says:“And
try not to get too depressed in the part of the journey, because there’s a
professional responsibility. If you are
depressed, you can’t motivate your staff to extraordinary measures. So you have to keep your own spirits up even
though you well understand that you don’t know what you’re doing.” This may disturb some people, but the fact is
that it is impossible to know if a decision will succeed our fail when you make
it; but decisions must be made and implemented, or a company will stagnate or
die.

There
is strong evidence that one of the main ways to increase the odds that a
decision will succeed is to express and feel confidence in it, even if you are
not quite sure, because – as hundreds of studies of the self-fulfilling
prophecy show, believing that something will succeed is one of the best ways to
increase the chances it will succeed. Indeed, if you want to read about another great leader who was fantastic
at presenting public confidence despite private doubt, see David
McCullough’s 1776, on George Washington’s defining year. As Grove adds,
such confidence then becomes authentic, and that further increases the odds
that good things will happen “And the
deception becomes reality -- deception in the sense that you pump yourself up
and put a better face on things than you start off feeling. After a while, if you act confident, you
become more confident.”

3. The third
point is the paradox that leaders face: They need to continue doubting what
they have done privately; but if they express too much public doubt, then
people lose confidence. A leader’s self-doubt also undermines the implementation of
current decisions – which increases the odds a good decision will fail and
slows the process of learning why a bad decision is a bad. At the
same time, if strong opinions are too strongly held, decision-makers have a
tough time admitting failure or even updating current actions to make them more
effective.

S0, to get out of this paradox, effective
leaders need to sustain some private self-doubt and as Michigan’s Karl Weick puts it -- argue if they are right, but listen as if they
are wrong. This requires surrounding
themselves with people who can and will argue over ideas (as Grove loves to do),
people who respect them, but tell them they are wrong (Henry Knox helped play
this role with George Washington).

4. The fourth point is
about how to update and change course.When Grove realizes he has made a mistake (and he
talks about his mistakes openly), he admitted them to yourself and others, and
then took swift public and private action to change course and make repairs –
this avoids focusing on making excuses, pointing fingers, or trying to hang on to as many elements of
the unwise action as possible (to avoid admitting your imperfections). That is why Grove says“So you take your shots and clean up the bad ones later” and adds “when
you realize that you are wrong, correct course very quickly.” Indeed, as we show in Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense, although
some leaders are loath to admit their mistakes, a growing body of quantitative
research suggests that when they admit that they and their companies have done
something wrong, are going to stop it, and take actions to make things better,
the performance of their organizations over the long haul is superior to
leaders who prefer to point the finger of blame outward rather than
inward.

I don’t
mean to hold up Grove as a perfect or infallible leader; he has certainly made
mistakes, as he is a human being like the rest of us. But I admire this statement
because conveys far more honesty and wisdom than the drivel that comes from most
executives… and note the complete lack of jargon
monoxide.

P.S.
The classic case of a leader that accepted reason ability and a firm that “acted with
knowledge while doubting what they knew,” of course, was Johnson and Johnson
and CEO James E. Burke’s handling
of the Tylenol murders in the 1980’s. We just reviewed that case in class this week, astounding story.

Comments

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Incredible post, this really has got me thinking. I really believe it shows more of strength of character for a politician to admit when he's been wrong rather than try to hold on and convince people that his wrong move was the right one.

Bob, what a wonderful post. I think it speaks volumes about our political culture today that leading candidates and politicians consistently refuse to admit making mistakes on the grounds that doing so would show weakness.

On the contrary, recognizing reality shows strength, and is far more likely to generate positive outcomes for the electorate.